by Ben Jeapes
“Every mind in the building was the same,” said Zoe. “She removed the blocks, but for that many minds she needed the strength of a living body in the here and now to do it. She didn’t want to possess me because that’s what he does, but I made her.”
Joe suddenly clutched at Ted.
“There’s a fire!”
Ted looked down at him and rubbed the bite marks on his arm. Joe was a frightened child and Ted couldn’t make himself be angry.
“Yeah,” he said. He pointed the little boy at the fire escape at the end of the landing. “You’ve all got to get out.” A bolt of adult responsibility struck him. “Wait! Get your dressing gown!”
He raised his voice.
“Okay, everyone!” A lot of the kids knew him; he hoped that would help them trust him. “We need to get out–” He coughed. The air was growing hazy. “Follow Joe there. Go down the fire escape, wait in the car park–”
The shambling crocodile of sleepy, dressing gowned forms gladdened his heart. He grabbed Zoe’s hand.
“C’mon, we’re out of here.”
Zoe had her head cocked with that middle-distance look that Ted was learning meant the witch was speaking. Suddenly she groaned.
“She says not everyone has woken up. The adults in the building. Older minds, easier to cloud, harder to clear.”
“Arse!” Ted ran in his head through what he knew of the hospice layout. Somewhere on this floor was the night nurse’s flat. She would need waking. And–
His eyes went round with horror.
“Oh, bollocks!”
He glanced at the fire door at the top of the main stairs. Black smoke writhed behind the glass. “Back stairs,” he said, and set off at a run for the end of the corridor.
“Not all the kids live up on the first floor,” he explained as they hurried down. “Some of them are in chairs–”
There were two doors at the bottom of the back stairs. One was the fire exit and the other was the fire door going into the building. There was smoke the other side of this one, too. It wasn’t as thick as the front of the building – there were several other fire doors between them and the lobby – but Ted knew it would be choking. His hand paused on the door handle. Oh crap, he so didn’t want to do this. A figure flashed up in his mind suddenly: 400. When the fire safety officers had visited school, they said that was how many people died each year just from going back into a burning building. More than one a day.
Suddenly Zoe’s hand was on top of his.
“Wait a moment.”
The witch flashed past them, through the door and into the smoke. It took just seconds.
“First doors on the left and the right,” Zoe said. “I’ll take the one on the left.”
Ted nodded and pulled the door open.
Immediately he could hear the shouts and cries, and immediately his eyes began to stream. He fought back a fit of coughing and stumbled with half open eyes to the first door on the right. The nameplate said Chloe Parker.
The air was cleaner inside Chloe’s room, just. Chloe had dragged herself out of her bed, sobbing and coughing, and was trying to lever herself into her chair. Ted helped her up.
“Okay,” he told her, “it’s really choking out there. We’re going to take a deep breath and then I’m going to rush you down to the exit. Got that?”
She nodded mutely.
“Let’s go–”
Ted pulled her out into the corridor and another shape loomed out of nowhere – Zoe with a small boy, also in a chair. Ted had to swerve to avoid collision. The moment he opened his lids more than a crack the smoke leapt in like a biting animal. He yelled, the kids started to wail and the four of them blundered towards the fire exit in a cacophonous stampede.
And then they were out into the cool night air. Further along the building, the other children milled around the bottom of the fire escape. Ted pushed Chloe over to one side and leaned with his hands on his knees, breathing deeply and sucking the clean air into his lungs with grateful whoops. Zoe leaned next to him. Her own chest was heaving beneath her coat and even now he could spare a corner of his mind to appreciate what a fine sight it was.
“There are two more left,” she told him. He bit back a whimper.
400.
Burning man.
“Right–” He glanced back at the building. “Okay. One last time.”
“They’re through the second door on the left and the fourth on the right.”
“You take the left one.”
“Whatever.”
They looked at each other, took breaths and ran back inside.
They had only been outside for a moment but the smoke had been reinforcing itself, waiting for them. They stumbled on, blind. The corner of a hall table slammed into Ted’s groin, and as he gasped with pain the smoke immediately rasped the inside of his throat and lungs raw. He could feel it leach the oxygen from his blood. A door slammed somewhere far off; good, Zoe had made it to her destination. He groped and blundered his way down the hall with his mind fizzing. Two doors. Three doors. Two doors. Two ... no .. three ... no ... dammit, he had lost count and his lungs were bursting and soddit, he was going into this one anyway because otherwise he would die–
He fell into the room and dropped to his knees. The smoke flowed in after him and he just had the presence of mind to kick the door closed. He knelt on all fours on the carpet and heaved.
A voice wheezed.
“Help! Please!”
He clambered up, turned on the light and moaned. He knew her name – Kirsty – and he knew she couldn’t move at all. Whenever he saw her in the dayroom she was strapped firmly into her chair, held upright to prevent her falling over.
“Right–” He clambered to his feet and looked about. “Hang on ... Where’s your chair?”
“Matron took it for cleaning. She said I’d have it back in the morning.”
“What?” Ted whimpered. He thought of picking her up and carrying her, back through that smoke. He’d never make it. That year’s number would go up to 401.
He crossed quickly to the window, which was cracked open to the night air. The anti-burglar locks meant it only opened a few inches. He sagged against the glass and pressed his face against the crack, breathing as deep as he could. Clean oxygen revived his starving brain.
Ted turned back to the girl in bed and checked her quickly. The bed was the kind that self-adjusted with a remote control, and it had wheels. It was plugged into the wall but as far as he could tell, everything else that Kirsty was plugged into was connected to something on the bed itself. So, the whole thing could be moved.
He thought of the run down the corridor, back to the fire exit. It would kill them both. They were nearer the dayroom.
“Right.” He unplugged the bed and started to rummage through the cupboards. He found a spare duvet and several covers so he spread them out on top of the girl, covering her face. Last of all, because he’d seen it done in movies, he pulled one of her blouses out of a drawer, soaked it in the basin and wrapped the dripping cloth around his head.
“Hold your breath as long as you can,” he said indistinctly. “Ready? Okay–”
Ted pulled the bed towards the door, flung the door open and pulled Kirsty out into the corridor.
The building shook to an explosion somewhere in its depths and a wave of heated air blew past them. He felt it even through the wet cloth over his face, but the blouse was working – he could breathe and think much more clearly, even if he couldn’t see. He tugged the bed backwards down the corridor with one hand, using the other to feel his way. Then his back thumped into the fire door that led to the public areas of the hospice. It felt warm.
This would be the final challenge, the last obstacle. Ted shoved his back against the door and into the hallway.
Heat blasted into him. He didn’t even think about opening his eyes or taking a breath, though his lungs were starving, because he could feel the poisonous smoke clawing at him. But the dayroom was only one do
or away. He heaved the bed through and pictured the layout he knew so well in his head. Chairs over there, TV in that corner, table tennis over there ... and the French windows straight ahead.
Ted knew he had to do this all in one movement because that was all he had. He swung the bed around so that it was in front of him, gripped tight with both hands and charged with a mighty yell.
The bed’s metal frame smashed into the windows and burst them asunder. Shards of glass fell on top of Kirsty’s padded form but she was well protected. The blouse protected Ted’s face but he felt sharp edges land on his hands and arms. Together they erupted out into the garden.
Ted tore the blouse from his head and pulled back the duvet.
“Are you okay?”
Kirsty grinned up at him, and pulses of blue light swept over them as the first fire engines lumbered into the drive.
Chapter 14
Ted had his own personal paramedic fussing over him. He sat on the back step of an ambulance with a silver space blanket draped over his shoulders, oxygen mask pressed to his face, while the man swabbed and bandaged the deep cut on his upper arm. It was the only damage from the broken glass that really required attention. Zoe sat next to him with a blanket of her own.
They also had their own personal police officers, a woman sergeant and a tall, burly inspector. The woman was reading back from her notes.
“Robert Adrian Gorse, aged thirteen, medium height, brown hair, brown eyes, probably wearing pyjamas, unable to speak,” she said.
Ted nodded without taking the breathing mask away. He savoured the sweet, sweet taste of clean air. He wanted to purge his lungs of every burnt molecule of smoke. He never wanted to see a flame again. He was quitting cigarettes with immediate effect. He was going to get his mum to scrap the gas cooker and go electric.
“All done. Get your doctor to look at it in a couple of days,” the paramedic said. Ted nodded again and the man moved on to his next patient.
“Right,” said the woman, “we’ll get a bulletin out–” She hesitated and glanced back at the lost cause that was the hospice. Black smoke billowed out of all the top floor windows and the downstairs windows were lit red from within. Dark, back-lit figures in uniforms moved among the ambulances that formed a half circle behind the fire engines, like wagons in an old western. The children were being treated and looked after.
Ted could read the cop’s thoughts.
“He’s not in there!” The mask muffled his words so he took it away and repeated. “He’s not in there. He was gone when I woke up. Look, ask Dr James. Robert just does not move around on his own. Ever. Someone took him!”
Dr James had arrived a few minutes earlier and had been in conference with the emergency services ever since.
“Get the bulletin out, Ali,” the inspector said. “We’ll also need to call the young man’s parents in Italy.” She nodded and moved away, talking into the radio at her lapel. The inspector stayed where he was. He was the well-padded, grey-haired, smiling, friendly, dad-like type of cop, which Ted knew from experience could be the worst, because he stayed smiling and friendly and dad-like all the time he was putting you into the car and you barely noticed it. From the sceptical glint in his eye, Ted had a sinking feeling that the questions weren’t over.
“Dr James has already told me she asked you to stay over.” Ted nodded. “But she said nothing about any other guests.” Now Zoe got the full benefit of the inspector’s frank gaze. “Why were you here, then?”
Zoe looked him in the eye.
“So we could have sex, duh!”
Ted’s head whipped round so fast he almost gave himself a crick. The inspector’s lip curled.
“Don’t you have a home to do that in?”
To his horror, Ted realised the question had been aimed back at him. Zoe, the inspector and a fireman who had come up behind him were all waiting for a response. He felt his face blazing and gave the first answer that came to mind.
“My mum would kill me.” As explanations go, it had the advantage of being one hundred per cent true. It felt good, not having to lie.
“Don’t give the hero a hard time, Inspector Blake.” The fireman’s visor was pushed back over his outsized yellow helmet, and he gave Ted a grin and a wink. Everyone in the first fire engine had seen his mad lunge through the French windows with Kirsty. “The kids who got out all say it was this young man who did it. No thanks to the others,” he added as a mutter.
Ted had warned the fire crews that none of the adults in the building had heard the alarm. He had seen the firemen run in with their axes and their breathing gear. They had had to drag the adults out, all kicking and fighting (but, Ted thought as he resentfully remembered Joe, probably not biting). Then he had seen the looks on their faces as the evidence of their eyes triumphed over the idea planted in their minds. One of them had asked loudly why the alarm hadn’t gone off.
He took the mask away again. “Will they be all right?”
The fireman shrugged. “Can’t say.”
“You took your time getting here.” Ted couldn’t help it – the words just slipped out. The man looked at him sideways.
“Eleven minutes from alarm to arrival, sonny,” he said. “Sorry we don’t do supersonic.”
Eleven minutes? God, was that all?
Zoe looked shrewdly up at the fireman.
“What did you mean, ‘the kids who got out’? They all got out!”
The fireman and the inspector exchanged glances, and the cop made an ostentatious display of checking his notes.
“We can’t comment on that. Obviously we need to make our own count before we can confirm–”
“There’s thirty-two kids!” Ted snapped. The thought of missing someone made nausea wrench him inside. “They’re over there. Count them!”
“Now, Ted, don’t you worry–”
“Count them!” Ted was on his feet. “Okay, I will.” He started to stride forward and craned his neck. The kids were too scattered among paramedics to make counting easy. “One, two ... no, wait ... one–”
Inspector Blake blocked his way.
“Ted–”
“We got them all out!” Ted shouted into the policeman’s face from a distance of a few inches. “We got them all out!”
“Okay, you deserve to know.” Inspector Blake checked his notebook again. “Thirty-two children resident, according to the night nurse and Dr James and county records and yourself. Twenty eight accounted for.” He snapped the notebook and shut and fixed Ted with another frank gaze. “I counted them myself. Four missing, including your brother who you say wasn’t there in the first place. I’m sorry, Ted.”
He put a hand on Ted’s chest and very gently pushed him back to sit down on the ambulance step. Ted looked dumbly up at him.
“Don’t dwell on it, Ted.”
“Ted–” Zoe moved over and gently wrapped an arm around his trembling shoulders. He saw the tears that shone in her eyes.
“We got them out–” he whispered. He had a sudden urge to fling his arms around her and sob into her chest, like he was a little boy again and she was his mum. “We got them out–”
“You did damn well, Ted,” Inspector Blake said. “Hold onto that. I’ll get Dr James. Don’t go away–”
They were on their own. Ted tried several times to say something but each time all that came was: “We got them all out! We got them all out!”
Zoe closed her eyes, communing with her inner witch.
“She cleared every live mind in the house,” she said, “but three were already dead. She saw them die. She saw him kill them.”
“He killed them?” Ted stared at her, at the burning building, at her again. Numb bafflement reduced his voice to a whisper. “Why?”
“Because he could.”
“Three kids–”
“Plus the porter, plus whoever he’s possessed now. He couldn’t wield this kind of power if he wasn’t physically present, so he’s taken over some poor sod’s body and he’ll h
ave just erased its owner. So, yes. Five murders and counting.”
Ted shuddered, swallowed back his tears, and sat up, slow and deliberate.
“We’re going to get him,” he said. He wondered for a moment: did he really want to go up against someone who could do this? Someone who had already tried to kill him once and would just be pissed off to learn he had failed? Then he thought of Nigel, burning ... Yes, he did.
She punched him lightly on the arm.
“Damn right we are. Our first best bet is still to call Malcolm–”
“So we do that.” Ted let the space blanket slide off as he stood up and hugged his arms to himself. It was cold: he still only had his t-shirt on, adrenaline was draining from his system and it was the very early hours of the morning.
The emergency services were getting the situation under control. Someone nearby said something about getting all the children to the hospital for check-ups and looking after. That, Ted realised, would include him. He was the oldest under-eighteen present and there was absolutely nothing wrong with him but he was still technically children. Once he was in official hands, his freedom to act would become a lot more limited. Whatever he and Zoe were going to do – and he had no idea what that actually was – they had to do it now, and he had a strong feeling that if anyone saw him trying to leave the scene, they would helpfully insist on him remaining.
“Where’s your car?”
“Forget it. It’s blocked off by the fire engines.”
And his bike was probably a melted lump by now, he thought glumly.
“Then we’ve got to walk, if you’re up for it.”
“Oh, I’m up.”
“Okay. We go home, my place, we look up Malcolm’s number, we call him ... and meanwhile you tell me everything.”
“So we have a plan.”
They backed into the shadows.
Chapter 15
There was no sense of transition. One moment, Stephen was in the room at the hospice, the old man crowding in and filling up his senses. Then something bumped into his legs and he fell over backwards, arms flailing, landing with a thump at the base of his spine and a teeth-crunching thud as his head hit the floor.
